Aggregate Recruiting Rankings (Rivals, Scout, 247, ESPN)

I’m sorry to post again, but I think the improvements are significant enough – thanks to some intelligent feedback – to warrant a new posting.

Below is my attempt to aggregate the Rivals, Scout, 247, and ESPN rankings into a universal list. The goal is to draw from all of the data available to create a single list that eliminates the need to juggle rankings, ratings, and stars from four different sites when comparing prospects.

First, though, I’ll describe the logic and process.

The Process

There are countless ways to do this, and none of them is perfect. Importantly, even though I’m a Michigan fan, I never considered how this would look for Michigan before deciding how to do it. I’m trying to make this as objective and sensible as possible given time and data constraints.

The first decision one has to make is whom to include. In my first draft, I included only those who appeared in the top X lists for all four sites. Others thought that requirement was too rigid, so I’ve relaxed it here. The players appearing on this list appear in at least three of the four following lists: Rivals’ top 250, Scout’s top 300, 247’s top 247, and ESPN’s top 300. This eliminates the “veto power” nature of the first rankings (and the related outlier worries), since two sites would have to leave out a prospect for him to be excluded.

The next decision is how to rank those who make it. The most straightforward way to do this is to take the average ranking for each prospect across the four sites. In an ideal world, each site would rank every prospect so there would be no missing data. That isn’t reality. Therefore, I imputed rankings where they were missing. Here’s how I did in for each site (this is boring if you aren't interested):

ESPN – ESPN actually makes this the easiest, because they just rank thousands of prospects. Every ESPN ranking here reflects ESPN’s actual ranking.

Rivals – Rivals ranks its top 250 prospects and then gives elite prospects a star rating and a “Rivals rating” of 4.9 to 6.1. Using those ratings – and especially the Rivals rating – I found the range within which a recruit must fall (rankings-wise) and gave him the middle value. For example, Rivals has 222 guys rated a 5.8. Of them, 163 appear in the Rivals 250 (and 59 do not). That means that a prospect who receives a rating of 5.8 from Rivals but does not appear in the Rivals 250 must rank somewhere between 251 and 309. For this prospect, I would impute a ranking of 280.

247 – Exactly the same logic as with Rivals except that I had to trust them when they said, for example, that about 300 prospects are rated 90 or higher. (They don’t let you sort by prospect rating.)

Scout – This one might seem unusual, but I think it’s actually pretty accurate. Scout doesn’t have anything like a Rivals rating, but it ranks prospects at their positions. For those outside of the top 300, I took their position ranking and imputed based on where ESPN had that ranked overall. For example, Scout has Amos Leggett as its #22 cornerback. ESPN has its #22 CB ranked #404 overall, so this is Leggett’s imputed Scout ranking. (There was an exception to this with two TEs that I can explain if anyone's interested.)

I hope that makes sense, and I’m happy to answer questions in the comments. Please feel free to share feedback or point out errors.

Also, if one of these sites significantly changes its rankings in the next few days I’m going to kill someone.

The Product

rank

name

pos

mean

Rivals

Scout

247

ESPN

college

1

Dorial Green-Beckham

WR

2

1

2

2

3

2

Eddie Goldman

DT

6

4

15

3

2

3

Mario Edwards

DE

6.25

2

8

14

1

Florida State

4

Stefon Diggs

S

9.25

8

12

8

9

5

D.J. Humphries

OT

10.25

3

18

13

7

6

Arik Armstead

OT

10.5

23

1

1

17

USC

7

Andrus Peat

OT

11

15

3

4

22

7

John Theus

OT

11

7

4

6

27

9

Johnathan Gray

RB

11.5

14

9

15

8

Texas

10

Shaq Thompson

S

11.75

10

11

5

21

11

Noah Spence

DE

13.75

13

6

32

4

12

Gunner Kiel

QB

14.25

19

16

10

12

13

Eddie Williams

S

18

20

36

11

5

Alabama

14

Keith Marshall

RB

18.25

55

5

7

6

15

Malcom Brown

DT

22.75

26

26

26

13

Texas

16

Kyle Murphy

OT

23.5

28

27

9

30

17

Rushel Shell

RB

26.25

33

10

39

23

18

Jessamen Dunker

OT

27.5

49

22

25

14

Florida

19

Jameis Winston

QB

28.25

52

30

16

15

20

Ellis McCarthy

DT

29

6

29

28

53

21

Darius Hamilton

DE

29.25

5

25

20

67

22

Nelson Agholor

S

31.25

9

53

22

41

23

Joshua Garnett

OG

32.25

22

24

40

43

24

Cayleb Jones

WR

39.25

21

23

93

20

Texas

24

Tracy Howard

CB

39.25

25

55

58

19

26

Noor Davis

OLB

39.75

30

77

34

18

Stanford

27

Geno Smith

CB

40.25

47

54

29

31

28

Dante Fowler

DE

41.75

11

39

43

74

Florida State

29

Yuri Wright

CB

42

41

75

12

40

30

Shaq Roland

WR

43.5

63

17

48

46

31

Chris Black

WR

44

57

71

19

29

32

Landon Collins

S

45

17

59

53

51

33

Aziz Shittu

DT

47.5

12

41

49

88

33

Jordan Jenkins

DE

47.5

56

44

27

63

35

Kennedy Estelle

OT

47.75

35

43

65

48

Texas

36

Jonathan Taylor

DT

48

36

66

46

44

Georgia

37

Ifeadi Odenigbo

OLB

48.75

48

60

37

50

38

Kwon Alexander

OLB

49

77

34

69

16

39

Jarron Jones

DT

49.75

67

14

21

97

Penn State

40

Josh Harvey-Clemons

OLB

50.5

39

78

61

24

40

Trey Williams

RB

50.5

24

20

24

134

Texas A&M

42

Thomas Johnson

WR

56.5

50

87

54

35

Texas

43

Jabari Ruffin

OLB

57.25

46

104

45

34

USC

44

Ronald Darby

CB

57.5

64

32

64

70

Notre Dame

45

Jordan Simmons

OG

57.75

45

31

70

85

45

Kyle Kalis

OT

57.75

18

21

52

140

47

Dominique Wheeler

WR

59.25

66

48

78

45

48

Devin Fuller

QB

60.75

37

150

17

39

49

Chris Casher

DE

61.5

83

57

96

10

Florida State

50

Durron Neal

WR

65

32

61

105

62

Oklahoma

51

Tommy Schutt

DT

65.5

29

47

51

135

52

Eli Harold

OLB

71.25

59

58

38

130

53

Channing Ward

DE

73

120

37

41

94

54

Adolphus Washington

DE

74.75

86

19

98

96

54

Barry Sanders

RB

74.75

121

50

50

78

56

Ricky Parks

TE

77.75

92

80

66

73

Auburn

57

Zach Banner

OT

79.75

31

46

117

125

58

Connor Brewer

QB

80.5

123

117

56

26

Texas

59

Avery Johnson

WR

80.75

43

83

155

42

LSU

60

Tee Shepard

CB

83.5

51

49

145

89

Notre Dame

61

Carlos Watkins

DT

84.5

76

91

30

141

62

Jonathan Bullard

DE

84.75

16

106

136

81

63

Alex Ross

RB

86.5

183

89

36

38

Oklahoma

64

Quay Evans

DT

87.5

169

7

141

33

65

Joel Caleb

WR

89.5

44

210

55

49

66

Davonte Neal

WR

91

136

114

86

28

67

Brock Stadnik

OT

91.25

165

69

72

59

South Carolina

68

Torshiro Davis

OLB

93.75

97

136

71

71

LSU

69

Travis Blanks

S

94.25

27

124

215

11

Clemson

70

Erik Magnuson

OT

96

34

96

85

169

Michigan

71

Zach Kline

QB

96.25

40

128

157

60

California

72

Mario Pender

RB

98

53

88

204

47

Florida State

73

T.J. Yeldon

RB

98.5

58

105

110

121

Auburn

74

Brian Poole

CB

99

75

42

143

136

Florida

75

Reggie Ragland

MLB

102.75

217

35

47

112

Alabama

76

Jordan Diamond

OT

103

209

40

60

103

77

LaDarrell McNeil

S

105.25

107

51

83

180

78

Peter Jinkens

OLB

106

101

101

166

56

Texas

79

Byron Marshall

RB

108.25

90

118

135

90

80

Se'von Pittman

DE

109.25

61

79

196

101

Michigan State

81

Germone Hopper

WR

109.75

102

172

101

64

Clemson

82

Javonte Magee

DT

110

127

81

44

188

83

Terry Richardson

CB

110.75

195

149

31

68

Michigan

84

Tyriq McCord

DE

111

60

181

103

100

85

Brian Nance

OLB

113.75

73

125

67

190

86

Avery Young

OT

114.25

38

13

287*

119

87

Dan Voltz

OG

115

154

99

23

184

Wisconsin

87

Kendall Sanders

CB

115

54

94

142

170

Oklahoma State

89

Devonte Fields

DE

115.75

147

145

102

69

TCU

89

Kent Taylor

TE

115.75

68

63

185

147

91

Michael Starts

OG

116.5

148

70

119

129

Texas Tech

92

Anthony Alford

QB

117.25

105

230

35

99

93

Justin Shanks

DT

118.75

111

84

162

118

94

Angelo Jean-Louis

WR

119

113

223

88

52

Miami (FL)

95

Evan Boehm

C

122

130

100

203

55

Missouri

96

Royce Jenkins-Stone

MLB

123.25

87

115

174

117

Michigan

97

James Ross

MLB

123.5

143

73

84

194

Michigan

98

Jordan Payton

WR

124.25

96

56

199

146

USC

99

Derrick Woods

WR

124.5

81

180

109

128

100

Elijah Shumate

S

124.75

112

93

76

218

101

Brian Kimbrow

RB

128.75

80

153

128

154

102

Sterling Shepard

WR

129.25

220

108

131

58

Oklahoma

103

Matt Davis

QB

131.25

144

38

187

156

Texas A&M

104

Brionte Dunn

RB

131.75

124

28

154

221

Ohio State-ish

105

Colin Thompson

TE

133.75

197

95

160

83

Florida

105

Zeke Pike

QB

133.75

72

33

18

412*

Auburn

107

P.J. Williams

S

134.5

173

127

124

114

Florida State

108

Dwayne Stanford

WR

134.75

93

107

228

111

109

Isaac Seumalo

OG

135.5

175

168

134

65

109

Jaquay Williams

WR

135.5

94

116

173

159

Auburn

111

Bralon Addison

WR

137

155

119

137

137

Texas A&M

112

Ronnie Stanley

OT

140

149

76

62

273

113

Sheldon Day

DT

142.25

280*

65

80

144

114

Deon Bush

S

142.5

65

264

175

66

114

Matt Jones

RB

142.5

157

82

178

153

Florida

116

Kevon Seymour

CB

143.75

85

193

132

165

117

Jelani Hamilton

DE

145

79

62

92

347*

Miami (FL)

118

Alex Carter

S

145.5

62

287

118

115

Stanford

119

Dillon Lee

MLB

148

232

207

81

72

Alabama

120

Lorenzo Phillips

OLB

149.5

146

199

111

142

121

Vadal Alexander

OG

151.25

280*

126

108

91

122

Jalen Cope-Fitzpatrick

TE

152

180

123

183

122

123

Wayne Morgan

S

155.75

139

270

33

181

124

Paul Thurston

OT

159.5

137

112

231

158

Nebraska

124

Timothy Cole

OLB

159.5

99

151

129

259

Texas

126

Scott Starr

MLB

160.75

110

186

106

241

USC

127

Korren Kirven

DT

161.5

280*

194

63

109

128

Marcus Maye

S

162.75

128

195

120

208

129

Cyrus Jones

RB

165.25

224

250

150

37

130

Denzel Devall

DE

165.75

125

232

91

215

131

Eugene Lewis

WR

166.25

162

67

219

217

132

Leonard Floyd

DE

166.75

159

121

94

293

Georgia

133

Justin Thomas

WR

168.75

205

217

82

171

Alabama

134

Reginald Davis

WR

169.25

214

120

261*

82

Texas Tech

135

Amos Leggett

CB

169.5

104

404*

75

95

Miami (FL)

136

Troy Hinds

DE

170.75

215

72

114

282

137

Greg Garmon

RB

172.25

184

68

232

205

138

Max Tuerk

OT

172.5

103

243

287*

57

USC

139

Drae Bowles

WR

173.25

109

300

182

102

139

Leonard Williams

DE

173.25

71

228

287*

107

139

Vince Biegel

OLB

173.25

95

218

214

166

Wisconsin

142

Faith Ekakitie

DT

173.5

100

216

104

274

142

J.J. Denman

OT

173.5

242

111

181

160

Penn State

144

John Michael McGee

C

173.75

82

169

210

234

145

Camrhon Hughes

OT

174.75

89

74

261*

275

Texas

146

Brandon Beaver

CB

175.25

114

166

77

344*

147

Quanzell Lambert

MLB

178

117

204

127

264

148

Kenyan Drake

RB

180.5

280*

139

73

230

Alabama

149

Chris Muller

OT

183.75

69

324*

100

242

Rutgers

150

Patrick Miller

OT

184

199

222

113

202

151

Keivarae Russell

RB

185

106

152

42

440*

151

Orlando Thomas

CB

185

119

269

133

219

Texas

153

Camren Williams

OLB

185.25

243

138

116

244

Penn State

154

Ty Darlington

C

186

118

241

287*

98

155

D.J. Foster

RB

186.5

74

200

287*

185

156

Aaron Burbridge

WR

189.25

134

90

229

304*

156

Ken Ekanem

DE

189.25

185

191

159

222

158

Ishmael Adams

CB

191.5

98

253

201

214

159

Curtis Riser

OG

192.5

244

220

123

183

Texas

159

Marvin Bracy

WR

192.5

245

177

238

110

161

Joshua Perry

OLB

194.75

131

231

235

182

Ohio State

162

Taylor McNamara

TE

196.5

84

302*

144

256

Arizona

163

Chris Wormley

DE

198.75

452*

113

57

173

164

Raphael Kirby

OLB

199

126

233

287*

150

Miami (FL)

165

Greg McMullen

DE

202

88

183

140

397*

Nebraska

166

Tyler Hayes

OLB

203.75

452*

122

115

126

Alabama

167

Cyler Miles

QB

204

160

272

138

246

Washington

168

Deaysean Rippy

OLB

205.5

247

103

146

326*

169

Dalvon Stuckey

DT

207.25

207

171

184

267

Florida State

169

Omari Phillips

OT

207.25

225

258

233

113

Florida

171

Jordan Watkins

DE

207.75

171

142

163

355*

172

Joe Bolden

OLB

211

167

238

287*

152

Michigan

173

Ronnie Feist

OLB

211.75

204

251

261*

131

LSU

174

Sean Price

TE

219.75

190

301*

164

224

175

Freddie Tagaloa

OT

220.25

206

219

188

268

176

Mike Davis

RB

220.75

122

234

198

329*

Florida

177

Kaiwan Lewis

MLB

221

280*

158

240

206

178

Jaleel Johnson

DT

223.25

140

203

261*

289

179

Nick James

DT

223.75

452*

110

107

226

180

Michael Barton

OLB

226

280*

182

205

237

California

181

Beniquez Brown

OLB

227

452*

134

195

127

182

Martin Aiken

DE

227.5

189

97

243

381*

183

Paul Boyette

DT

227.75

168

224

323*

196

Texas

184

Michael Moore

DE

229.25

176

286

125

330*

Virginia

185

Jeremi Powell

OLB

229.5

218

275

170

255

Florida

186

Warren Ball

RB

230

212

52

206

450*

Ohio State

187

Reggie Daniels

S

231.5

280*

154

208

284

188

Adam Bisnowaty

OT

234.75

177

302*

202

258

189

Shane Callahan

OT

235.25

191

173

323*

254

Auburn

190

Jonathan Williams

RB

238

170

209

246

327*

Missouri

191

Chad Voytik

QB

242.5

153

277

368*

172

191

Deontay McManus

WR

242.5

108

247

139

476*

191

Mike Madaras

OT

242.5

230

260

287*

193

Maryland

194

Evan Baylis

TE

242.75

280*

189

225

277

Oregon

195

Bart Houston

QB

246.25

452*

160

197

176

Wisconsin

196

Jordan Diggs

S

248.25

280*

268

158

287

197

Deion Bonner

S

252.5

452*

176

153

229

198

Lacy Westbrook

OG

255.75

213

137

186

487*

199

Trevor Knight

QB

264.75

228

274

261*

296

Texas A&M

200

Amara Darboh

WR

268.75

194

161

148

572*

201

Jody Fuller

WR

272.75

210

543*

152

186

202

Malcolm Lewis

WR

274

164

596*

193

143

203

Armani Reeves

CB

274.25

187

144

59

707*

204

Darreus Rogers

WR

280.75

172

135

74

742*

USC

205

Zac Brooks

WR

282.5

174

278

126

552*

206

Tom Strobel

DE

284

231

211

169

525*

Michigan

207

Quinteze Williams

DE

285.25

452*

279

190

220

Florida

208

Bryce Treggs

WR

288

133

102

230

687*

209

Gabriel Marks

CB

289.5

166

239

172

581*

210

Ondre Pipkins

DT

295

246

175

149

610*

211

Kyle Dodson

OT

302.25

152

187

192

678*

Wisconsin

212

Brandon Fanaika

OG

308.5

202

257

213

562*

213

Edward Pope

S

319.5

193

280

218

587*

TCU

214

Quinshad Davis

WR

321

250

292

234

508*

215

Leonte Carroo

WR

326.25

211

86

245

763*

216

Deontay Greenberry

WR

331.5

115

244

209

758*

Notre Dame

217

Michael Richardson

DE

371.25

756*

294

226

209

Texas A&M

218

Kwontie Moore

MLB

383.25

116

1054*

97

266

Virginia

219

Germain Ifedi

OG

384

756*

285

242

253

Missouri

*imputed

A final note about ESPN

Several commenters in my previous diary expressed that they’d like to see these rankings without ESPN. I don’t think there’s enough reason or evidence to dismiss ESPN entirely. However, for those who are interested, here’s how some recruits would rank among the above prospects if ESPN were excluded: Kalis (23), Washington (55), Magnuson (57), Ross (76), Dunn (79), Diamond (82), Richardson (104), Jenkins-Stone (106), Stanford (123), Burbridge (131), Pipkins (169), Strobel (181), Wormley (183), Bolden (201). Of course, the list of prospects included would change if ESPN were ignored altogether.

Really nice. Only recommendation I might have which I've seen others use when doing this is to not use the actual overall rank for kids outside the top whatever for that site. Reasoning behind that is just that you've already ensured these guys are in 3 of the 4 rankings so only one of the sites is going to be an outlier, you could chalk that up to just poor scouting by that site.

For example, Kwontie Moore is 218th but has overall ranks of 97, 116, 266 and 1054(!). He's getting dragged way down because of that last number but since that one seems to be the outlier, it could be discarded.

Since Scout ranks the most with 300, I'd recommend that anyone with a rank higher then that just be scored at 301 for that site. It would largely eliminate that outlying score which isn't really being considered anyway since they need to appear on 3 of the 4 lists.

Just my 2 cents. Love this though. Eliminates most of the biases across different sites.

This is one of the many ways to impute data. In truth, though, I don't like it as much.

With a small number of data points (four), I think you have to be careful about dumping data. That's especially true if some of these sites are looking to the others for guidance (meaning that we really wouldn't have four independent data points).

More generally, I think it's important information that Site X really dislikes a certain recruit. If you give everyone a 301 or 350 or something, you lose all of that information. My preference is to incorporate everything you have, doing the best job you can with available data to pinpoint a ranking. Kwontie Moore is particularly unusual because Scout thinks so little of him that he didn't make their MLB rankings at all. My view is that this is relevant information (especially b/c Scout feels so strongly about that that it's willing to be an outlier). Other views might be reasonable, too.

hammered by ESPN. Reeves would be well within the top 150 but ESPN gave him a 700 something which is near twice his other 3 scores combined. Like the Soviet judge at the Olympics.

Edit:Kieth Marshall has the 2nd biggest outlier after Zeke Pike. The Rivals 55 rating more than triples his average from 6 to 18.25, whereas Zekes ESPN outlier makes his average 3.262 times greater than the other 3 services consensus.

It's strange to see where they actually agree on anybody. It feels like Scout and 247 rate guys as Sophomores and leave it that way for a while, and Rivals and ESPN rate kids as Juniors, but they all change down the road. Some of the outliers are just funny. Magnuson 34th to Rivals, 169th to ESPN. TRich 31st to 247, 195th to Rivals. The top 15 are funny to see just how much they disagree. Reminds me of the Keystone Cops in their clumsy dilligence. Pipkins numbers are going to skyrocket his senior year, lol.

Given 219 players, each team from a BCS conference, assuming all teams are on equal ground (they aren't, I know) should average 3.42 players from this list. Texas has 12 and doesn't have to leave the state to recruit. Must be nice.

For the most part you see a general consensus from Rivals, Scout, and 247. ESPN almost has a monopoly on outliers. Running down the list you see ESPN differ greatly from the other 3, for years I thought I was just imagining it.

Interesting idea, but my own view is that this, too, drops too much information. I made a similar point above, but we're working with limited data points for each observation, and I tend to think that the outliers tell us something important. Basically, these are the prospects for which a site feels so strongly that a recruit is over/underrated that it's willing to go on a limb.

Zeke Pike offers an interesting example. His rankings are 72, 33, 18, and 412. The 412 comes from ESPN and is its actual ranking (i.e. not really imputed). If we were to take the median, Pike would have a 52.5, which should easily place him in the top 50. Maybe ESPN's crazy and that's the right thing to do, but the fact that they dislike him that much seems relevant to me. His current ranking of #105 feels more appropriate.

No information is "dropped" when using median; the data still exists. The idea is to use the method that best estimates a true average. When outliers are rampant (e.g. salaries, home values) median is typically a better average than mean. The Pike example was cherry-picked, as CW has his stock dropping. Pipkins makes an easy in-kind counterpoint. Regardless, I applaud your effort and hope you provide us with future updates.

Technically, I guess you're right that medians don't "drop" data, but they definitely lose some of the nuance. Mat articulated this well below, but I'll use a real player. I'm not cherry-picking this based on a trend; the numbers just illustrate the point well.

Take Devin Fuller. He's ranked #17, #37, #39, and #150 by the recruiting services. Scout has him at #150, which clearly reflects some uncertainty about him as a prospect (since they're willing to publicly be much more down on him).

The median of Fuller's rankings would be 38. It wouldn't change at all whether Scout ranked him at #38, #150, or as a one-star player. My view is that it's a mistake not to incorporate that information. If Fuller committed to Michigan tomorrow, I would note Scout's reservations in my mind, not just write them off as an outlier.

If there were 100 recruiting services here, I would completely agree. (This, by the way, would bring us closer to your salary & home value situations.) Hell, maybe one of them would rank a top 10 recruit at #80,000 because the kid slept with the guy's mom. We don't have enough data points to make that a good idea, though.

Thanks for posting this. I hope this ranking system actually catches on around this blog.

While we're talking about great user created content, does anyone know what became of the recruiting map that was posted about a month ago? I thought that was also a great idea and took a bit of work. Would love to see an updated version of that.

From what I can tell, it hasn't been updated since at least when Pittman chose MSU. I believe it is open source content though, so a user should be able to add Pittman to MSU and also add/subtract anyone from Michigan.

Like I said on your other diary I really like what you've done but as a few other mentioned those outlier rankings really bother me and affect the standings too much.

When you see one recruiting site disagreeing on a player by 400-900 ranks something is going wrong.

What do you define as an outlier? On the small scale looking at someone like Keith Marshall at #14 the 4 sites have him at 55, 5, 7, 6 which if you call the 55 an outlier would bring him into the top 3.

But then that one rank doesn't look as off when you have Amara Darboh at 194, 161, 148, 572 (outlier of 378 spots) the already mentioned Kwontie Moore 116 1054 97 266 (outlier of 788 spots) or Leonte Caroo 211 86 245 763 (outlier of 552 spots).

First, your calculation isn't correct. Second, the aim is to develop a reasonable estimate for the next credible data point. Assume this next data point is provided by Lemming (I know, I know), using your made up player above, which is a better guess at Lemming's ranking of that player, 48.5 (mean) or 8 (median)? Given the type of data, most statisticians would argue the latter.

I really like your analyses. I'd like to see these rankings account for the ranking of a player within his position group (complicated by the fact that some players aren't ranked the same in all positions). There has to be a factor that could correct for situations where some positions are just naturally ranked lower, but where having the top player at a given position should reflect favorably on the school the player goes to.

Thanks this is some great info I really like what you did and agree that a median would be less informative. I am a majoring in engineering and one major thing i have learned is that when you has less than 10 independent data points you should not disclude any or rely on anything but the mean. With this said I think you could get extremely creative by considering a way to include the median as 1/5 of the data points. By doing this you would then calculate the median for each player, make a separate column for it like you have for Rivals, Scouts, 247 and ESPN and include that number to give you your mean. this would make a player ranked 7,7,9,9 ranked much better than a 7,7,9,200 but would make a player with a major outlier like Marshall and players mentioned above less of a factor. I also like the star rankings average that would be cool as mentioned above and the idea for individual positions but I know how much time this takes. What you have is excellent and everyone will always have an opinion to what is wrong with your way of combining stats so don't worry too much about those who don't appreciate everything you did.

With all of this said I would like to post a diary of some information I created last Friday but I am having trouble inserting an excel spreadsheet like this from my computer. Can someone tell me how to upload a table like this to mgoblog?

and i can certainly understand your plea for no quick changes in the sites' ratings. Tried pulling the data to run some scenarios myself, got pretty decent formulae for extracting info from the webpages, but then ran into the fact that for too many of the guys, they do not use standard spellings of their names, so there's a ton of manual work involved to build up this kind of calculation. Bravo!

Agree on your position of using mean vs. median; for a player with rankings from all 4 sites, the median is going to be mathematically equivalent to dropping the highest and lowest and averaging the remaining two (and thus eliminates too much useful data).

I don't think that much granularity really will make the difference. What does it mean to be the #251 overall or the #291 overall? More precisely, since recruits are ranked by position, does it matter that much if you're the 40th TE or the 45th TE? I would say no.

As an easy rule of thumb, I figure that anybody that makes a 150/250/300 list is heavily scouted and most sites assign them the 5/4 stars. Beyond that, it's hard to tell within the sea of 3 stars who is there on ability and who is there because they didn't camp/late bloomer/play for a small terrible team etc. There is a consensus at the top with the 5 star/high 4 star level (as in, he's really good!), followed by a steep level of variation. This is to be expected, as obviously the rankings are subjective. You don't know why the #20 CB is ranked 200th but the #21 CB is ranked 240th. is that sign of a huge gap in talent? Or is it because the guy who was in charge of scouting the 21st CB didn't speak up, or didn't have enough influence? You're trying to get very granular on a flawed set of data.

To look at the variability, just take your matrix and look at standard deviations.

For prospects 1-10, the average standard deviation is 6. Not great, but not too bad

For prospects 1-25, the average standard deviation is 12. (16 for 11-25)

For prospects 1-50, we're up to 20. (28 for 26-50)

For prospects 51-100, the average standard deviation is 54 spots.

For prospects 101-200, the average standard deviation is 83 spots

For the remaining 20 prospects, the average deviation is 233 spots.

As a whole, from 101-220, the deviation was at 107.

Taking a quick look at those numbers, there seems to be a consensus among the top 50 or so athletes. I don't feel like running the numbers, but I bet you can find a significant difference within the deviations of players between 1-50 and any other set of 50 players. Once you move past the top 50, the recruiting sites start disagreeing much more on individual placement.

So again, I think we're trying to reinvent the wheel here. Without each scout scouting all 1500 3*+ players, I don't think you're ever going to get a great ranking system beyond player #50 or so.

Some other fun things:

Dropping ESPN doesn't have a huge impact to variances. They do go down (as to be expected if you remove 25% of a data set), but not to the point where you could really call out ESPN for being too crazy

Your player with the most disagreement is Kwontie Moore (#218) with a whopping 453 as a standard deviation. Thanks a lot, Scout.

Your player outside the top 100 that has the lowest deviation is Bralon Addison #111 ranked here. The sites agree, he's somewhere around the #137th best player in the nation. No site has him ranked above #119.

Meawhile the player in the top 100 that has the most deviation is Travis Blanks, #69 at 95 positons. This is due to two services ranking him in the top 30, one at 124, and 24/7 has him at 215.

A total of 15 prospects on your list rank better by aggregate than they did on any of the 4 lists.

The one point on which we most clearly agree: these rankings aren't great past #200 (for those last 20 guys or so). Initially, I dropped them and called it a top 200, but I figured that someone would get irritated by that and want to decide for him/herself what to make of the last 20.

More generally, I also agree that there's a decent amount of variation across the sites. I disagree, however, that this is reason to give up on aggregated rankings. The fact that there's variation across the sites is exactly why it's useful to aggregate like this. If there were general agreement, then it wouldn't be hard to figure out who's where. In general, too, we should believe that a recruit who's ranked #251 is more highly regarded than one who's ranked #291. It's true that those are difficult judgments for the sites to make, but on average, I see no reason not to assume that the recruiting service generally likes a player who's ranked a little higher more than one who's ranked a little lower.

On another note, I really like those points at the bottom of your post, and you hit on something that I think is important. You said that 15 recruits ranked better in aggregate than in any individual ranking. Part of the reason that I think this type of aggregation is useful is a trick that numbers play on people. When I look at a recruit who's ranked, say, #95, #100, #100, and #105, I might be tempted to say that he's roughly the 100th most highly regarded recruit. That's not true. He's actually #75. This is hard to see without aggregated rankings.

(I just noticed that you stuck this in the original post, too -- thanks for that -- so I'll post my response there as well.)